Minister drops C-word in Parliament while protesting opinion column
Wednesday, 14 May 2025
Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden slammed “misogyny” and used the C-word in Parliament to denounce a controversial opinion column.
That column said ministers had shown they were “prepared to be a c…” to lower paid women in order to save the Budget.
MPs from all sides engaged in heated exchanges, with Deputy PM Winston Peters calling it “the lowest” he’d seen the House.
Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden has decried “misogyny” in the pay equity debate and herself used the C-word in Parliament, to denounce a controversial opinion column which used that word against Government ministers.
Wednesday marked an especially heated day in the House, with MPs from all sides screaming and heckling at each other. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who first entered Parliament in 1975, said it was the lowest he’d ever seen the House.
The barracking reached a crescendo when Labour’s workplace relations spokesperson, Jan Tinetti, asked van Velden if she agreed with points made in a Sunday Star-Times column about pay equity.
The author, Sunday Star-Times national affairs editor Andrea Vance, accused Finance Minister Nicola Willis of partaking in “girl math”, criticised the response from female ministers, and said they were “shafting” lower paid women.
Vance said ministers were “prepared to be a c… to the women who birth your kids, school your offspring and wipe the arse of your elderly parents”.
The opinion column was published after the Government moved, under urgency, to scale back ability for women to make pay equity claims.
ACT leader David Seymour said the change, led by Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden, had saved the Government “billions” and “saved the Budget”.
During question time on Wednesday, Tinetti asked van Velden if she agreed with Vance’s column, specifically the quote: “It is a curious feminist moment, isn’t it? Six girlbosses - Willis, her hype-squad Judith Collins, Erica Stanford, Louise Upston, Nicola Grigg, and Brooke van Velden - all united in a historic act of economic backhanding other women.”
Van Velden initially answered by saying she had not found a single sentence in Vance’s column that she could agree with. At that point, Speaker Gerry Brownlee said she needn’t answer further and cut off the response. Van Velden and Labour’s Keiran McAnulty said she should be able to deliver a more fulsome answer.
She later said: “I do not agree with the clearly gendered and patronising language that Andrea Vance used to reduce senior Cabinet ministers to girl bosses, hype squads, references to girl math and c…s.
Van Velden later told reporters she went into Parliament planning to use the C-word, so she could make an impact statement denouncing “misogyny”.
She said it was wrong of Labour to ask a question about the Sunday Star-Times column. When she saw their plan she said she checked with Parliament's Clerk to see if her using the c word would be a breach of Standing Orders. She said she was advised she could quote the word.
“When someone brings a misogynistic article into the chamber and into our Parliament, I thought it was that I had a right of reply. That is why I decided to stand up for myself and stand up for my colleagues,” she said.
Van Velden said there had been a decline in the standard of debate about her amendment to the Equal Pay Act.
“It’s very disappointing. When I was compared to a Nazi by the Labour Party sharing that post, Chris Hipkins came out and said it was inappropriate to share that image. I would question whether he thinks it’s inappropriate for the Labour Party to have brought misogyny into the House,” she said.
That post, which was a photo shopped image of van Velden standing in front of a Nazi flag, was shared by a Labour community group on Facebook. Labour MPs in Parliament denounced it.
The Government benches applauded van Velden’s response in the House, although Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters held his head in his hands when she said the C word.
Leaving the debating chamber, he told reporters: “I’ve seen some bad times in this House, but this is one of the lowest I’ve ever seen. When you go to that sort of standard of language, nothing is beneath you after that, is it?”
Tinetti said van Velden “can’t have it both ways”.
“She didn’t like some of the words there but she used those same words back in her answer,” Tinetti told Stuff.
Tinetti did not say the C-word in Parliament. She said she “cannot stand” it.
“It was used today, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like hearing it. I struggled with hearing it,” she said.
Joanna Norris, the managing director of The Sunday Star-Times publisher, said this was not the first time her newspapers had printed the C-word.
“On this occasion it was decided it was acceptable usage in the context of this column. Andrea Vance, and her editor Tracy Watkins, are two of the country’s foremost political writers and since the column was published, have received both strong support for - and criticism of - the column’s views and the manner in which they were expressed,” she said.
She said there had been a “spectrum of views” and opinions printed about the pay equity change, including an opinion column from Finance Minister Nicola Willis in response to Vance’s column.